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Owner of Lowell Civil War major's pocket watch believes it proves he was present at Lincoln's deathbed

By David Pevear, dpevear@lowellsun.com

Updated:
12/03/2012 12:13:00 PM EST

A gold pocket watch pulled off a scrap pile in Lowell in the 1970s sparked research that now raises the chilling possibility that its original owner, Maj. Jonathan Ladd of Lowell, was present at Abraham Lincoln's deathbed.

A pocket-watch collector from Duxbury believes he is getting closer to placing Ladd and his watch at that momentous place (a room in a boardinghouse across the street from Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C.) and time (the morning of April 15, 1865). Paul Mellen has wound facts, circumstantial evidence and conjecture into a historical mystery that so far is still ticking.

"Like hitting Powerball," he says about recent research discoveries adding pieces to his story.

Mellen now owns the watch, which was engraved to Ladd by the officers of the Union 2nd Corps in March 1864. He bought it earlier this year on eBay, complete with index cards containing notes from research done by Robert Betty, the scrap-metal operator who rescued Ladd's watch and is now deceased.

He won't say how much he paid for it, but Mellen estimates the watch itself -- even without factoring in the attached history -- is worth about $10,500. He says it was an extremely expensive watch even in its day -- a coveted 20-size Appleton Tracy grade, 15 jewels with a gold balance, from a run of 99 watches produced from Nov. 1 to Nov. 30, 1862, by the Nashua branch of the American Watch Company, based in Waltham.

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Expanding on Betty's research, Mellen scoured online records of the National Archives and microfilm at Harvard University's Lamont Library. The historical mystery consuming him is better even than Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, which Mellen has seen.

"Whenever I get a pocket watch, I find out who owned it," he says. "Boy, was I in for a surprise. The archival record gave me goose bumps."

Cousin of Luther Ladd

Jonathan Ladd was a cousin of Luther Ladd, buried along with Addison Whitney beneath the Ladd and Whitney Monument at the intersection of Arcand Drive and Merrimack Street in Lowell.

Luther Ladd and Whitney were killed by a secessionist mob in Baltimore on April 19, 1861, while with the 6th Massachusetts answering Lincoln's initial call for 75,000 troops. They are often credited as being the first two Union soldiers killed in a war that would eventually kill more than 620,000 from both sides.

Mellen notes eerie bookends: Jonathan Ladd's cousin, Luther, killed by a mob in Baltimore at the start of the war. Jonathan Ladd perhaps there at the end of the war when Lincoln drew his final breath after being shot by an actor from Baltimore, John Wilkes Booth.

According to Mellen, Jonathan Ladd was an able administrator who oversaw the transporting of Massachusetts troops to Washington, D.C., in the early days of the Civil War. Thereafter, Ladd spent most of the war stationed in the Paymaster's Department in Washington, where he was well connected. Both Lincoln's first-term vice president, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, and Sen. Lafayette S. Foster of Connecticut were Ladd's cousins. So it is not inconceivable this paymaster could get so near to a dying president, Mellen says.

Mellen points out that a clerk from the paymaster's office, William T. Kent, later testified that he was asked by a surgeon for a knife to cut open Lincoln's clothes in the box at Ford's Theater. Kent testified also he later went back to the box to search for a night key he thought he dropped and found the Derringer that Booth fired into the back of Lincoln's head.

"The fact there is a connection to the paymaster's office -- it's possible Ladd was also there (at the theater)," Mellen suggests. "Kent was a clerk, not an officer. There's no way they would have let a clerk be at the deathbed."

Mellen's "most exciting and significant document" is a copy of a lengthy speech given in 1892 by Henry Lawrence Burnett, a brigadier general who had been an assistant judge advocate involved in prosecuting the Lincoln conspirators. In March, Mellen received a copy of that speech from the Goshen (N.Y.) Historical Society. In that speech, Burnett noted the time of the president's passing (7:22 a.m.), quoted Secretary of War Edwin Stanton as saying "now he belongs to the ages," and listed everyone present, which included "Ladd."

Mellen says Burnett's mention of "Ladd" verified postings on a genealogy website that also suggest Ladd was at Lincoln's deathbed.

Mellen presents a quote from Reverend Dr. Phineas Densmore Gurley, a spiritual adviser to Lincoln, who was also in the room when the president died. Gurley noted that the silence in the room was so profound, "the watches in all the men's pockets" seemed to be "ticking loudly."

Mellen wonders if one of those loudly ticking watches was the one he now owns.

Not a Civil War buff

Mellen, 55, was not a Civil War buff before all this. But old pocket watches have fascinated him since he and his daughter, Maren, now 15, bought one at a thrift store in 2008.

"We thought it would be valuable," Mellen says. "It turned out to be a junker."

As for the Ladd watch, Mellen does not know why Ladd was presented with such a valuable piece.

Two months after Lincoln was assassinated, Ladd was "dismissed" from the Army for receiving a cut of the sutler's sales of pocket watches and other items to solders, a violation of military regulations. He returned to Lowell, practiced law, became president of the Middlesex North Agricultural Society and bought a farm in Tewksbury. He died in Lowell in 1889 at age 69.

Mellen says President Andrew Johnson, before leaving office in 1869, recommended that Ladd's military record be modified to an "honorable discharge." Mellen plans to ask members of Massachusetts' congressional delegation, 143 years later, to attach that recommendation finally to Ladd's military record.

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